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Monday, July 13, 2009

Two Film Reviews (He's Just Not That Into You & Knowing)

As always, I'll stay spoiler free. Over the weekend my wife and I decided to have us a movie night. We went to the closes Redbox and got Knowing (starring Nic Cage) and He's Just Not That Into You (starring everybody that's ever been recently famous). Below are my opinions.

HJSNTIY is a girl movie at heart, so I was biased from the get-go. However, as the film unfolded I found myself drawn in, like a puppy to a bowl of 'forbidden' food. The movie follows several different characters as they search for true love. One couple is married (Jennifer Connelly and Bradley Cooper). One couple doesn't necessarily believe in marriage (Ben Afleck and Jennifer Anniston). Two girls just want to be a couple (Gennifer Goodwin and Drew Barrymore). Two guys also want to be couples, though they don't know it yet (Kevin Connolly and Justin Long). And then there's one girl (Scarlett Johansson) that's just disgusting in her actions. And that's not all of the stars that are in the movie, but you get the point.

Anyway, the film is basically a mosaic at first, presenting the viewer with a quote that happens to set the scene for what's coming up. This mosaic introduces you to the many, many different characters that are all indirectly inter-related. People start to date or fall apart or whatever. And then the second half of the movie throws the "quote" thing out the window and follows the choices the people have made.

My problem with this movie was that there were too many characters, or too many connections. I can handle that when it's presented over a long bout of time (like in Lost), but when it's crammed into a 2-hour spot it's too much. It's like A and B are together, but B falls for C, who happens to be with D, who is best friends with E. F and G are in a relationship, and G is B's best friend. H is looking for a relationship and gets help and advice from her co-workers, A and F. And that's not even half of it. I'm sure the creators used some sort of flow chart or matrix to work everything out. Overall, the plot was semi-interesting, but I only really cared about a few of the characters. Nothing fantastic with this one.

Knowing stars Nicolas Cage. It was a wonderfully suspenseful movie, and Keisha was sure she was going to have to wake me up to go downstairs with her the next morning when she got up for work. The movie presented a very interesting plot: 50 years ago a school fills and seals a time capsule. One of the students hears whispers and writes this mysterious sheet of paper filled with random numbers. When the capsule is opened, Nic Cage's son gets this sheet of paper and starts to hear whispers and see these strange people. Cage, a brilliant astro-physicist at MIT, works out the numbers to dates and locations of disasters, along with how many people will die. He sets out to stop and rescue people, also trying to figure out the mysterious last sequence.

Up through this point I enjoyed the movie, despite myself. I was expecting something lame with some explosions, but instead I received an intriguing storyline with characters I enjoyed. There were some cool graphics, and there were some suspenseful scenes.

Then everything went out the window. The movie went from being pretty good to absolutely ridiculous. Keisha said to forget about waking me up. Thriller and Suspense were discarded for something a bit more deus ex machina. And that was it. The end. It turned out it was complete lamesauce, like my initial thinking. But I would recommend it to you, just so you could experience the ending. Wow.

All in all, movie night was fun, hanging out with my sweetheart, eating Chex Mix and dark chocolate, even if the movies were crazy-bad.

2 comments:

A good rom-com is enjoyable if it's done well, but most of the times they're very formulaic. Therefore, I inevitably avoid them.

Knowing sounds more my cup of tea. What's big Nic up to these days with his face? All that plastic surgery is making him look like a melted welly! Still, he has to be one of the finest actors about just now. I watched him in a movie a few nights ago. I think it was called Next. He could see couple of minutes into the future. Most enjoyable I thought.